The cult didn't leave Haneul alone.
The letter had been polite bait.
When that failed, they escalated.
Three days after the triage event, a "volunteer" from a local charity knocked on the hospital's front doors with flowers and care packages "for the special cases."
He wore a soft smile, plain clothes, a discreet bracelet humming with borrowed System access.
[OBJECT: BRACELET – ROOT_ICON VARIANT.][FUNCTION: SOUL-SCAN PING.]
Haneul saw him through her window feed and felt the shard bristle.
[FRAGMENT: ALERT LEVEL +1.]
He didn't ask for her room.
He just walked the halls, "accidentally" passing by.
The bracelet pulsed each time it neared a room, sending out soft, probing pings.
Looking for resonance.
Looking for her.
Cho noticed first.
He stepped into the hall, intercepting the volunteer with a tight smile.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Oh! Doctor," the man said. "Just delivering some comfort gifts. Poor Tower victims, you know how it is."
Cho's eye twitched at the phrase "Tower victims."
"We have protocols for distribution," Cho said. "If you leave everything at the front desk, staff will handle it."
The man smiled a little wider.
"Of course," he said. "I also offer… spiritual counseling, if anyone's struggling. The Towers test more than the body, after all."
The bracelet pulsed again.
Haneul felt it.
Like fingernails scraping across glass inside her chest.
She hissed.
"Jerk," she muttered, grabbing her tablet.
She pinged Kael and Mira in quick succession, camera feeding the man's face and bracelet.
We've got a bracelet-wearing creep doing a shard sweep in the halls. Call it a hunch.
Kael's reply was instant.
On my way.
Mira's followed.
Stall. Don't confront. Cho, get him out of there.
Haneul swung her legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the way her muscles complained.
Cho, oblivious to the messages, kept his doctor tone polite and firm.
"I'm afraid we can't have unscheduled visitors in patient corridors," he said. "You'll have to—"
The man's eyes flicked past him.
Toward Haneul's door.
Just for a second.
The bracelet buzzed.
[RESONANCE DETECTED – LOW SIGNAL THROUGH NOISE.][TAG: POSSIBLE FRAGMENT HOST.]
Haneul's privacy ring fought it, injecting noise into the metadata.
The signal smeared.
The man frowned.
"Some patients require special attention," he said carefully. "The System touches them more than others. We like to make sure they're… spiritually grounded."
Cho's patience snapped.
"This is a hospital, not a shrine," he said coldly. "Your concern is noted. Please leave."
The volunteer's smile thinned.
"For now," he said.
Then he turned down the hall, walking away.
Haneul's shard didn't settle.
It spun.
[FRAGMENT STATUS: DORMANT (ALERT – EXTERNAL HOSTILE PROBE).]
Kael arrived ten minutes later, breathless, hair still damp from a rushed shower.
"You're not supposed to sprint in this condition," Haneul said.
"You're not supposed to have scanner cultists playing hot-cold outside your room," he shot back.
Mira arrived a few minutes after that, less breathless but with the same tight shoulders.
Cho gave them a quick, terse summary.
"Local charity," he said. "New. Tied to a 'Tower Spiritual Recovery' group, apparently. Bracelet had some kind of scan generator. I've already blacklisted them from visits, but that won't stop them from lurking outside."
Mira's jaw flexed.
"Grayroot's people," she said. "Or someone like them."
"Can we… scan back?" Haneul asked. "Find out where they crawl back to?"
Kael considered.
He'd felt the ping too, through his link.
He could, theoretically, latch onto the signal path and trace it through the System's routing tables.
Theoretically.
"Risky," Mira said. "If you tug on that thread, they'll feel it. And we don't know what kind of protections their icon toys have."
"Let them feel it," Haneul said. "Maybe they'll think twice before poking."
Her shard pulsed in agreement.
[FRAGMENT: ATTITUDE – IRRITATED.]
Kael frowned.
"We drew lines," he said. "We'd focus local, help where we can, not go picking fights we can't win."
"They came to my room," she shot back. "I'm not asking you to storm their basement. Just… flick them in the forehead."
Mira sighed.
"Welcome to escalation," she said. "We can't stay invisible forever. Sooner or later, someone tries to stake a claim."
She looked at Kael.
"Up to you," she said. "You're the one who'll be playing tug-of-war with their code."
He stared at the empty doorway where the volunteer had been.
He thought of the cult's broken shard in the warehouse. Of "lost child" tags. Of ADMIN_0's Node.
He thought of Beta and its statistic charts, of flags like HARM_FOR_GROWTH.
"Okay," he said. "We flick. Once. Then we vanish again."
Beta hummed.
[NOTE: PROPOSED RETALIATORY TRACE ACTION.][RISK: UNKNOWN. POTENTIAL BENEFIT: THREAT DETERRENCE.][OBSERVING.]
Haneul grinned, feral.
"Let's make a god-bug bite back," she said.